Wednesday, January 9, 2013

The Next Big Thing

The amazing Mary Biddinger tagged me for The Next Big Thing interview series. Thank you Mary!
Here are my responses about my book which is forthcoming from The National
Poetry Review Press.

What is the working title of the book?

Inappropriate Sleepover

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I didn’t realize I had
written a book until it was pointed out to me by mentors and friends. I had
been publishing poems in various magazines and journals since late spring 2009.
It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about a full length collection in the future,
but my focus was on writing and publishing a few poems at a time. I feel that
writing and publishing is like performing on the page and I’ve really enjoyed
having my work in print and online publications. I guess a book is like a
one-woman show which is exciting.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry.

What actors would you choose to play the part
of your characters in a movie rendition?

A quirky twenty-something
brunette actress would be needed as well as some actors and actresses of
different ages.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your
book?

A
coming-of-age poetry collection where the speaker encounters and overthrows a
variety of societal barriers.

How long did it take you to write the first
draft of the manuscript?

The poems were written
over the past four years. A couple of poems go back as far as fall 2008. Many
of the poems were written in the last year and a half.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The material in the
book came from my own life and imagination, but I was influenced by many
artists including Chelsey Minnis, Frank O’Hara, Gilda Radner, Denise Duhamel,
Matthew Guenette, Robbie Q. Telfer, and Bob Fosse.

What else about your book might pique the
reader’s interest?

Some of the poems are
funny, or so I’ve been told. Some of the poems play with conventions of
femininity. The clash of innocence and experience comes up, and ultimately these
coexist within the speaker. Some of the poems are fairly racy, I suppose.

Will your book be self-published or
represented by an agency?

The book is
forthcoming from The National Poetry Review Press. The editor of the press is C.J.
Sage.

About Me

Meg Johnson is the author of the full length poetry collection Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014).﻿﻿﻿ ﻿Her second book, The Crimes of Clara Turlington, won the 2015 Vignette Collection Award and was recently published by Vine Leaves Press. ﻿Both books were NewPages Editor's Picks. Meg's poems have appeared in Hobart, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Puritan, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and others. Her nonfiction has appeared in BUST, Ms. Magazine, The Good Men Project, and Bustle. Meg started dancing at a young age and worked professionally in the performing arts for many years. She received her MFA in creative writing from the NEOMFA Program. She is the editor of ﻿Dressing Room Poetry Journal and has taught writing at Iowa State University and University of Akron. Her website is: megjohnson.org